Brobdingnagian

There have been many instances in my life where things have happened to me that have an outsized effect on my consciousness, my awareness of who I am and where I stand in the world.  Sometimes it has been something I've heard that really struck a chord.  Seaweed's Greatest Hits.  One that has stuck with me over the years was a period of ill health I had.  One of the reasons I do a Daily Gratitude List is that I'm not by nature grateful.  I don't know . . . maybe most people aren't.  Life can be a slog and it's easy to be wary of what shitstorm is coming next.  Anyway, one of my major blessings is overall good health and I tend to take this for granted.  We do this with a lot of things when they're going well and seem stable - spouses, families, work, financial well-being - and then when life tosses a grenade into our soup as it certainly will do we're surprised at how much we enjoyed that stability, how much it receded into a pleasant background hum.

I have begun to notice an intermittent fluttering, breathless feeling in my heart.  AFib, I think it's called.  I know this because - of course - I got on the Internet and found some websites whose main function seems to be to scare the shit out of you so you linger and maybe look at the advertisements on the side of the page and purchase some goods or services you don't need.  I don't suspect that this is anything serious and I have made a doctor's appointment but, man, when your heart is changing it's tune it's disconcerting.  One can do without many things but a beating heart is not one of them.

Too much caffeine is one of the potential causes of Afib.

SuperK: "So maybe you need to cut back on your coffee?"

Seaweed (looking at SuperK with an expression of disgust and alarm):  "If the choice is quitting coffee or dying of a major coronary?  Hmmmm.  I'll get back to you on that one."

So here's the story . . .  Again . . .  Sorry.

Several years ago I caught a nasty chest cold which took a while and some antibiotics to shake off and get well.  But my worn down body was an easy target for influenza which I think I've had maybe three times in my life and once is enough, I'll tell you.  I was good and sick for another few weeks before I gradually shook off the virus but now my body was extremely worn down so I got another standard, not-too-bad, run-of-the-mill cold.  After a few weeks I was finally virus free and found myself extremely, extremely grateful that I wasn't sick.  It brought me pause, wondering how easy it is to take my blessings for granted while blowing my challenges up to Brobdingnagian size.  (Ed Note: SuperK ran into that word in a book she was reading so I had to express my love for her by working it into the blog which she does read . . . eventually  . . .  allegedly.)

It also makes me appreciate The Serenity Prayer even more and this is a prayer I have a great deal of appreciation for on a daily basis.  The constant balancing act of trying to wait when I should wait and act when I should act.  It's amusing/alarming/frustrating/infuriating/hilarious how often fear causes me to linger when I should be moving and makes me rush headlong into something that is best left alone.  Something or the other about the wisdom to know the difference.  Something I should remember because it's important.

Something . . .  something . . .  something.